News stories from Saturday September 3, 1977
Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:
- Aircraft leased or owned by the Georgia bank once headed by Bert Lance may have been used for political purposes, including trips to the Democratic National Convention, say sources familiar with an investigation by Internal Revenue inspection agents. The I.R.S. agents, conducting an investigation at the direction of John Heimann, Comptroller of the Currency, are preparing a report that will be submitted to the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee next week. [New York Times]
- Interstate bootlegging of cigarettes has reached such proportions that it is second only to narcotics in profitability for organized crime, a report said. The Advisory Commission on Inter-Governmental Relations said that "four New York crime families, employing more than 500 enforcers, peddlers and distributors, smuggle an estimated 480 million packs into the state each year," and that estimated tax loss exceeds $62 million. In a nine-state area in the Northeast, the panel said, organized crime bootlegs more than a billion packs of cigarettes annually. [New York Times]
- Richard Nixon thought he had directed H. R. Haldeman to "destroy" all but the most historic of the White House tape recordings in April 1973, three months before Watergate investigators learned of their existence, the former President said in his final television interview with David Frost. Mr. Nixon said he could have been spared "the agony of the resignation" had his instructions, which he conceded might have been ambiguous, been carried out by Mr. Haldeman, then the White House chief of staff. Mr. Nixon also speculated that "there'd have been no Watergate" if former Attorney General John Mitchell had not been preoccupied by the "mental and emotional problem" of his wife, Martha. [New York Times]
- Pakistan's former Prime Minister, Zulfikar All Bhutto, was arrested on a charge of conspiring in the attempted minder of a political opponent in 1974. The government radio emphasized that Mr. Bhutto had been arrested under civil authority -- for violations of the penal code and not under the martial law that was imposed in the coup in July that forced him from office. In remarks last week, Mr. Bhutto anticipated his arrest and said that he might run for Parliament from prison. [New York Times]
- New support has been found for the hypothesis that blood constituents known as HDL (high density lipoproteins), which are plentiful in some people and scarce in others, act as powerful preventers of heart attacks. They are thought to remove cholesterol from body tissue, including artery walls, and deliver it to the liver for excretion. Scientists are considering the possibility that heart attacks might be prevented by artificially raising HDL levels in the blood. [New York Times]
- A record for spending has been set by New York City's Democratic mayoral candidates, and the outlay for television commercials in the final stages of the primary campaign this week will be $500,000. The figures are not yet complete, but the seven candidates are known to have spent $3.8 million to date solely in the primary campaign, more than $500,000 than the five candidates spent in the entire 1973 primary election, the runoff and the general election. This might be a restoration of the "big money" campaigns that were killed by Watergate. [New York Times]